


periphery demographic

by Infinitree



Series: Captain Underpants and the Confounding Chronicles of Counterpart Communication [5]
Category: Captain Underpants Series - Dav Pilkey, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017)
Genre: Gen, once again i wrote this instead of sleeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:07:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24934234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Infinitree/pseuds/Infinitree
Summary: “I dunno, I was kinda hoping we’d appeal to a more cooler demographic.”(Or, the one where they realize that aspects of Krupp can influence Captain Underpants.)
Series: Captain Underpants and the Confounding Chronicles of Counterpart Communication [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1804579
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	periphery demographic

**Author's Note:**

> AKA: The one where I play Calvinball on the book/TV series canon because I don’t know or remember it. This is just a bunch of disjointed drabbles, all of which are set before _filler arc_. Like, _way_ before it. What can I say, chronology is my enemy.
> 
> Puns are hard. Writing in Captain’s POV is also hard. Both of these things are in this fic because I got Lost In The Sauce.

Captain is still, his body hunched over and ready to attack. The strings of the Hurly-Gurdy groan as mechanical limbs tries-- and _fails_ to reach the boys.

George and Harold hold onto each other still, despite being out of its clutches. The spiked wheel had come too close for comfort, and the music’s effect still lingered, still made them sick.

The titanic robo-instrument rises and then falls for the last time. Captain still doesn't move.

Harold wipes his bleary eyes. “C-- Captain Underpants? Are you--”

And then he turns around.

Sure, there was a certain awareness that Captain Underpants and Krupp were the same person. But most of the time, it was something they don’t think about-- even if they shared the same face, the same body, they held themselves up different, their way they projected their voice was different, and a smile and a lack of cheap toupee worked wonders for the illusion.

 _But_ that was a pretty huge but.

The snarl is familiar and wrong. Harold had never seen his eyes so angry, let alone drew them like that. Words, George surmised, wouldn’t do it justice.

In that moment, they remember that he’s also Krupp, and instinctively step back.

And just like that, the illusion is back. The hero’s shoulders loosen. His mouth relaxes and pinches back into a concerned frown. The ire that was pointed at the villain that nearly made the both of them the subject of an Ultra Violent Flip-O-Rama-- _and them, in that brief moment--_ is doused.

“Sidekicks?” Captain’s voice is small. He’s just as horrified. "Are you alright?"

“Y-- yeah,” Harold ventured.

Silence.

“Haha, you were... _real_ intense there for a second,” George added, in what he hoped sounded like a light, joking tone. “Like-- _grrr!”_

Harold picks up the lead and makes an exaggerated version of the same expression that had them terrified a moment before. George does the same, before laughing.

Captain gives a laugh. They’ve been at the Pranking and Making People Laugh game for too long, they _know_ the difference between the real article and a fake one, but they keep their mouth shut about it.

* * *

Sun showers were an uncommon occurrence in Piqua during this time of the year, but it did conveniently wash away the remains of the Moo-rauding Cow Pies.

“Whoa, that was _so_ cool!” George whooped. “I’d sure hate to be the guy to have missed the whole fight.”

Harold raised a fist in celebration. “Heck yeah!” he cheered. “Good thinking on writing something up on Captain knowing how to hogtie stuff.”

The other boy’s face fell flat. “What?”

“You know, you writing the comic script before--” he stopped as he finally noticed his expression. _“-- aaaand_ you didn’t, did you?”

George tilted his head. “I thought _you_ drew something and Krupp confiscated it, or something!”

“Well, if _you_ didn’t write about it--”

“-- And _you_ didn’t draw it…”

The boys gave a worried glance to each other, before their collective gaze shifted to Krupp. He took the curtain cape off and pulled it over his shoulders in an attempt to hide himself better. And failed. And almost tripped due to his effort. At the sound of a familiar pair of giggles, he remembered that he wasn’t alone.

“What?” he snapped, face red as a beet.

Harold scratched the back of his head. “Uh, we were just wondering when you taught Captain Underpants to wrangle a cow?”

Krupp raised a brow. “What, you think I have time to teach that numbskull? Or _care_ to?”

“Well, he couldn’t’ve learned it outta nowhere!” George pointed out.

“A mutated cow’s still a cow,” he huffed. “Didn’t one of your idiotic issues say he was raised on a farm?” 

“Yeah, the _Origin Issue_ did,” George said.

“The one you ripped up,” Harold chimed in, crossing his arms. “Which we haven’t _redone_ yet.” 

“But that still wouldn’t explain Captain’s sudden cow-wrangling skills.”

There was a moment of silence as the gears turned in the principal’s brain. His face twisted into confusion, and then to horror as he eyed the knots on the ropes that once housed the mutated cows. His gaze flicked down to his own hands as if they were entirely foreign to him.

To be fair, a few moments ago, they weren’t even controlled by him. Except, they kind of were? That was his handiwork, right down to the small fumble his mother would often scold him for. And then he remembered where he was and _who_ he was, and immediately clenched his fists. He gave the boys a dismissive look as he tried to pull the cape over the rest of him.

“It was an educated guess,” he tried to justify, but none of them were convinced-- least of all him.

It was all just muscle memory. Nothing more. He wasn’t dealing with this, not now. Definitely not today, and definitely not _here._

“I need to find my clothes before the weather gets worse.” He spun on his heel and marched into the underbrush, trying to ignore the cold and what he hoped was mud that was clinging to his feet. And--

He had almost forgotten. “And boys?--”

 _“Detention,”_ George finished with a wave of his hand. “We know.”

“After school,” Harold added.

“And--” Frustration flared across his face. He refused to not be the last word on this one. _“And,_ during lunch break. For the next two days.”

* * *

Captain Underpants woke up in the gloom of his counterpart’s living room. 

And as usual, came the bout of uncomfortable tingling that wracked his body. _Yeesh,_ if his counterpart insisted on wearing clothes, could he at least wear something that _didn’t_ feel like he was wearing poison ivy but a bajillion times worse?

The only source of light was the television flickering across him. Images of people singing and dancing, and most importantly _snapping_ flew across the screen.

Was he... was he _watching_ this? Or was it just a case of channel surfing and being at the wrong channel at the wrong time? Either way, he didn’t really care for it. After a few minutes of fumbling out of his counterpart’s clothes and even more minutes fumbling with the remote, he finally reached the cartoon channel. One of them, anyway. 

Well, right now it wasn’t really the cartoon channel. 

_Most’a the stuff at the early night block is sitcom stuff,_ he recalled one of his sidekicks saying before making a mock-retching noise. 

Instead of bright cartoons, there was a colorful living room where a family was sitting around. One of the children entered, clearly hiding a new pet in his bag and lying-- _for the greater good for that poor creature,_ his mind added helpfully-- with the family none the wiser.

Maybe it was because he didn’t have much of a childhood-- but he did, didn’t he? He had a loving set of ~~dolphin parents~~ ~~dads~~ ~~parents~~ ~~mother~~ _family,_ he settled on, since that word hurt his head the least. Seeing the people on screen talk and get into avoidable happenstance and fight, but still make up by episode’s end was strangely comforting. 

The hero knew it wasn’t real-- his counterpart scolded him about it, at least, scolded as best he could on a tiny square of paper after recording it on some Important VCR-- but, hey, apparently _he_ wasn’t real either, so what did it matter?

(By the time Krupp comes back to, he’s in his bathroom staring at his own bloodshot eyes near midnight on a school night.)


End file.
